


235. handful of light

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [118]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:05:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8384812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Sarah and Helena take Helena's daughters for a picnic.





	

The trip to the top of the hill is long, and is made longer by the child clinging onto Sarah’s leg like a persistent monkey. Faith seems to think that Sarah will be able to tow her _and_ the picnic basket up the hill, and isn’t dissuaded by Sarah’s wheezes of effort. Hope has already sprinted to the top and is yelling at them to _hurry up, slowpokes, I know Auntie Alison made us cake and I want it!_

“Don’t be brat,” Helena yells up at Hope, and Hope sticks her tongue out. Helena sticks hers out back. Hope stops yelling down at them, and flops down on the top of the hill with a sigh.

“Can you take the basket?” Sarah says. “Got a monkey problem.” She shakes her leg a little bit, and Faith buries her face in Sarah’s leg and giggles quietly.

“Oh no,” Helena says, very solemn. “I heard you have to tickle monkeys, to get rid of them. Right in their ribs.”

Faith sucks in a shocked breath and in one motion lets go of Sarah’s leg and sprints towards her sister at the top of the hill. Sarah shakes her leg a little bit and keeps walking. Next to her, her sister watches the twins at the top of the hill hug each other like they’ve been apart for years instead of three minutes.

“They’re good kids,” Sarah says quietly.

Helena tilts her head to the side and looks at her with an expression Sarah can’t read in her peripheral vision. “They are,” she says. “I do not know how much of this is mine, and how much of it is theirs.”

“It’s you,” Sarah says; she would add something but her heart hurts, some jumbled-up tangle of Helena playing hopscotch with Faith and a young Sarah hiding under the bed and waiting for someone to want to pull her out. _Wish any of them had been like you_ , that’s what she’s looking for, but it’s not something she can say so she doesn’t say it.

Instead she says: “You’re doing a good job. You know that, don’t you?”

“You’re going _so slow_ ,” says Hope. “Why are all old people so slow!”

“Sarah,” Helena says loudly, “I am getting tired. I think maybe we should sit down here and eat all of this delicious cake ourselves.”

Hope yells _noooooooo_ and stretches it out to maybe eight syllables. Helena and Sarah laugh, and Sarah knows Helena is avoiding responding to what she said, and she doesn’t push it too much. She’ll keep saying it. Someday Helena will believe it.

They reach the top. From here you can see most of the city; it’s spread out below them, limitless and infinite. Sarah would give it all to Kira, if she could, and she knows Helena feels the same about Hope and Faith. _This is for you. Reach out. Take it._

Sarah puts the picnic basket down and Hope is on it, rummaging through it until Helena says: “Hope.”

Her voice is a little sharp, but mostly disappointed. Hope’s hands hop into the air like they’re burned.

“Sorry,” she says quietly. “Can I have cake, please.”

“Vegetables first,” Helena says.

“I _hate_ vegetables.”

“Yes,” Helena says. “They are bad. Eat them.”

Hope makes an exaggerated sound of dying and finds the vegetable platter Alison has somehow managed to fit into the basket. The carrots are cut into little flowers, which mollifies her.

Sarah spreads out the blanket, and she and Helena sit down. The second they’re down Faith has crawled into Sarah’s lap, and is playing with the ends of her hair. She’s very warm; she smells faintly like milk and bread.

“Hey,” Sarah says. “You want carrots?”

Faith shakes her head. _No_.

“Alright,” Sarah says. Helena passes her the thermos full of tea and she takes it. The wind is blowing; the sunlight is settling over everything like a thin gold veil. It’s strange, sometimes, to think _I’m happy_ and mean it. She is still not quite used to the feeling.

Hope has sprawled over Helena’s lap with a jealous glare at Sarah-and-Faith, but she’s distracted showing her mother the carrot flowers and the bitterness doesn’t last for too long. The tea is still warm, in Sarah’s thermos, and Faith is picking pieces of grass and eating them, and Helena is meeting Sarah’s eyes over her daughter’s head with a look of wry fondness that Sarah has never gotten to share with anybody. _Look at my kid._ Sarah will tell Faith to stop, soon, or maybe Helena will – but not yet. Not now. Now she just leans back on her hands and closes her eyes. The sunlight is warm on her eyelids. She’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
